Microsoft sends mixed messages with its new design tools — Microsoft is sending out mixed messages, in terms of its Web-design-tool strategy. — First, there's the positioning. Redmond's "we plan to complement, not compete with Adobe" rhetoric — which I'm doubtful anyone who knows Microsoft will buy for a second.

Wife, daughters of missing CNET editor found alive — update The wife and daughters of missing CNET senior editor James Kim have been found alive and airlifted to a local hospital, authorities announced at a press conference in Merlin, Ore., Monday afternoon.

A MySpace for grown-ups — Social networking has been great for the kids, but not of much use to business - until now. With Reid Hoffman's MySpace-for-grown-ups at a tipping point, these days you're either LinkedIn or left out. — (Business 2.0 Magazine) — At a Starbucks in downtown Mountain View …

The Future of Web Ads Is in Britain — If you want a glimpse of the future of advertising, you can hire a consultant — or you can travel to Britain. — Online advertising is racing ahead in Britain, growing at a roughly 40 percent annual rate, and is expected to account for as much as 14 percent …

Ask City Launches Amid High Expectations — Barry Diller is putting a lot of pressure on Ask. He keeps talking about Ask's role in IAC's overall operation and local in particular. When he acquired Ask for almost $2 billion Diller immediately touted Ask's ability to knit together …

The big Digg rig — Digg became one of the top sites for tech news because it lets Web-savvy geeks decide what's newsworthy, offer up stories they like and vote on their favorites. — Now, dubious Internet marketers are planting stories, paying people to promote items …

Bram Cohen on BitTorrent's Future — Ace programmer Bram Cohen denies he is leaving BitTorrent — and says he's busier than ever positioning the company to totally own online video downloads. — In an exclusive e-mail interview, Cohen responds to the rumors that he is stepping down …

Xbox 360 sales below expectations [update 1] — [Update: Apparently this is a false story that has been circulating the web chain-letter style. Let's wait until the official NPD numbers come out and add them to the weekly Japanese numbers.] — It could be assumed that when Microsoft …

How to Build a User Community, Part 1 — Most user communities take a typical path—the newbies ask questions, and a select group of more advanced users answer them. But that's a slow path to building the community, and it leaves a huge gaping hole in the middle where most users drop out.

Porn prank sends Microsoft a message on licensing — One Microsoft group received a rather harsh lesson in Creative Commons licensing today: For a while this morning, Microsoft's RSS Team Blog featured a partially censored pornographic image, which has since been removed. — How did it get there in the first place?

Rumors swirl of ultrathin MacBook Pro — As Macworld creeps up on us (only a month away now!), rumors of the iPhone and what features the iTV will have aren't enough for the Mac web. Because of this, in comes the smaller, ultrathin MacBook Pro rumor, which claims that there will be a new iteration …

Quintura - visual tag cloud connective search — Yakov Sadchikov wanted to catch up with me at MediaTech2.006 (edublogscom reportage here) and, having seen his product, it was mutual! Quintura allows you to browse related topics to the topic you are searching for - great when you're not too sure what you want to get into.

The five Google products — It seems like only yesterday that a bunch of breathless articles appeared touting the brilliance of Google's innovation strategy. That strategy was, if you recall, the spaghetti strategy: Throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.

Nice place you have here — In an e-mail correspondence with Tim Spalding from LibraryThing about Enterprise 2.0 I finally put my finger on why I don't like SharePoint. — If social computing is going to be effective in the workplace things have to be different - fundamentally.

THE LOST TAPES — Conversations tape-recorded in the early years with Google's founders illuminate how their actions forged the growth of a Silicon Valley giant — When I contacted San Francisco's Upside magazine in late 1999 about writing freelance articles, my first assignment …

VeriSign locks up .com through 2012 — VeriSign will keep control over the .com top-level domain under terms of an agreement signed last week. The US Department of Commerce has finally approved the deal reached last year, which will allow VeriSign to raise rates by up to 7 percent in four …